What if finding a good outside counsel match was as easy as swiping right?

The legal industry's not quite there yet, but a working group of in-house and outside counsel is striving to simplify the matchmaking process, and that may include building a Tinder-like app to help match the in-house attorney with the right legal help. The working group sprung from September 2017's SOLID East conference in New York.

Columbia Sportswear's VP of legal Jennifer Warner is leading the group alongside Jennifer Selig and Brian Stempel, both of Kirkland & Ellis. The size of the group has doubled since SOLID's most recent conference, held in San Francisco in March. In-house lawyers from Liberty Mutual, T-Mobile U.S Inc., and pharmaceutical company Mylan N.V. are among those involved in the working group.

“We're looking to better define demand and supply side needs and to bring those needs together,” Warner said. “It's still pretty early days in terms of what that concept will look like.”

Some group members have said the final product could be a tool that matches in-house and outside counsel. That's not at all definite, but the group does hope to leverage technology to simplify the matchmaking process and better align outside counsel services with in-house counsel's needs.

Warner said she's interviewed a number of senior in-house counsel about where they see the largest misalignment between their needs and what outside counsel are offering. Legal departments are looking for more innovation, transparency and fair pricing from outside counsel, she said. Warner said Selig, who is the director of customer relations and IT practice support at Kirkland, has been speaking with leading outside counsel to hear their perspective.

“Right now there is a disconnect between supply and demand,” Warner said. “There is a lack of understanding on both sides, and so law firms aren't quite sure what to do and offer.”

Philip Bryce, the global director of knowledge management for Mayer Brown, joined the working group when it started, and said he's seen it grown to include firm lawyers, in-house attorneys, vendors and other professionals in the industry.

He said the group has had regular calls to report and brainstorm on how to improve legal services alignment with client needs. Ideally, he said, the final product would be in place before the next SOLID conference at the end of 2018.

“It's very challenging to predict the future, but [we'd like] to attempt to create a small number of possible or new models for legal service delivery between the buy side and the sell side and provide some kind of matchmaking tool or framework that is actually actionable,” he said.